DiscussMormonism.com

by spotlight » Sun Apr 17, 2016 8:24 pm

LittleNipper wrote:
That black man is stretching things if he images he can trace his LINAGE back 338,000 years. DNA data doesn't even last for more than about 10,000 years according to almost anyone in the field. You will not even accept the Linage of the Messiah as recorded in New Testament for both his step-father and mother. Y chromosomes so old-------------------------- they don't even know how life originated.

Two points here, it wasn't the black man who traced his genealogy back 338,000 years. It was a group of researchers who looked at his DNA sample. This was not done by looking at DNA from something 338,000 years old dug out of the ground. It was determined by comparison to present day DNA in present day populations. His DNA represents divergence that requires that much time to accomplish.

Let me see if I can give you Lionel train metaphore so that you might understand this. Say you have an existing train set. There is a certain variation in paint schemes on the train cars due to microscopic critters that drag paint brushes behind them. It requires a year to completely recover a train car with a new color paint at the rate they work. You study your train cars and observe that most show a recovering with paint of about 10% of their surface area. This requires 36 and a half days to accomplish. Already this falsifies the train creation myths accepted by a certain branch of train creationists that declare the trains came into existence only last week by the magic incantations of the train god "I think I can."

Image

But now in the bottom of a pile of cars in a box you discover a car that is 90% recovered in paint. So it is 328 and a half days since the critters began repainting the surface of this car.

It requires a certain amount of time to arrive at a certain degree of difference in DNA within a population. Sorry but 6,000 years does not cut it.

Still, Hammer said, “It is likely that other divergent lineages will be found, whether in Africa or among African-Americans in the U.S. and that some of these may further increase the age of the Y chromosome tree. There has been a lot of hype with people trying to trace their Y chromosome to different tribes, but this individual from South Carolina can say he did it.”

The study has even further implications. It strengthens the belief that there is no “mitochondrial Eve” or “Y chromosome Adam.”

All of humankind, as a result, did not descend from exactly one pair of humans that lived at a certain point in human evolution.

http://news.discovery.com/human/genetic ... 130307.htm

But this is of no consequence to someone who believes in a magic text that describe an earth created before the sun, moon and stars is it? A text that describes the creation of man after the creation of the animal kingdom in one chapter and then the creation of man followed by the animal kingdom in the very next chapter. You like the story and prefer a story to facts and evidence even if it contradicts itself and venerates a god murderer.
Bring back the lions, the Romans weren't stupid.

"In my mind science could make great leaps forward if it can just get over this nonsense about observed things." - FrankTalk
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spotlight High Priest Posts: 385Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2013 6:44 pm

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Re: Bible verse by verse

Postby Gunnar » Sun Apr 17, 2016 11:14 pm

LittleNipper wrote:

spotlight wrote:
How is it that being descendents of Adam and Eve humans have a bit of DNA that the black race does not (Neanderthal)?
How did the black race lose it? Or how did the rest of the human race obtain it?

The Denisovans’ DNA is found in our DNA as well. No trace of it is to be found except in the genomes of New Guineans, other people from islands in Melanesia, and Australian Aborigines. On average their genomes are about 5 percent Denisovan. Negritos in the Philippines have about 2.5 percent. Again how does a biblical model explain this fact? Did Adam have this DNA or not? If he had it how did we lose it? If not how did we obtain it?

Race is a myth.The myth of race http://web.mit.edu/racescience/in_media ... out_human/
Spotlight is spot on! Nothing in your link lends any support whatsoever to YEC or the notion of Biblical inerrancy (it does exactly the opposite of that, in fact), nor does it in any way weaken our position or strengthen yours. That you think it somehow does only further underscores your own irrationality, desperation to believe and/or your basic dishonesty and willful ignorance. That you apparently cannot see that glaringly obvious fact is another example of my often used metaphor of someone insisting that it is midnight while staring straight at the sun at high noon on a cloudless, mid-summer day!
No precept or claim is more deservedly suspect or more likely to be false than one that can only be supported by invoking the claim of Divine authority for it--no matter who or what claims such authority.

Science Overturns Evolution's Best Argument

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Evidence for Creation › Evidence from Science › Evidence from the Life Sciences › All Life Systems Were Created by God › DNA Was Created as a Reservoir for the Information of Life


Transposons are a class of “mobile genetic elements” that operate within the DNA of living organisms. For years, macroevolutionary proponents have claimed that their presence undoubtedly supports Darwinian evolution. But a recent investigation showed that transposons have been wrongly interpreted, changing macroevolution’s best argument into its worst nightmare—an almost complete lack of genetic material for it to “tweak” into newly selectable features.

Transposons are segments of DNA that utilize cellular machines to replicate themselves and then splice the copies back into the host DNA, thus inflating the total volume of DNA without adding new genes. Some species appear to have large volumes of DNA that resulted from this process. About 44.4 percent of human DNA consists of repetitive elements, with perhaps most from transposons.

Many scientists still believe that these repeated segments contain nearly random, functionless, non-coding sequences with which “evolution” can tinker. But a new study published in Nature Genetics found that they actually contain functional code that is accessed for use in specific tissues.1 Scientists recently discovered that DNA which came from transposons can regulate the expression of gene products.

One class of transposons, called “retrotransposons,” is formed when DNA is copied into RNA, which is then reverse-copied back into DNA. Retrotransposon sequences had been almost dogmatically interpreted by evolutionary scientists as remnants of ancient viruses. These viruses supposedly infected the host organism long ago, and it was assumed that the viral DNA became incorporated into one or more of its chromosomes.

Intriguingly, chimpanzees and humans share some almost identical repeated sequences that look as though they were formed by retrotransposons. Evolutionists have argued that they must have been introduced by the same virus before the two species diverged from a (presumably) ape-like ancestor. Thus, each species retains today a remnant of the same ancient viral infection.

This is often cited as strong evidence that humans and chimpanzees share common ancestry, and therefore that broad-scale evolution is true―that single cells can eventually develop into humans through random natural forces. This is currently one of evolution’s best arguments.

But the argument rests squarely upon the premise that these long DNA repeat sequences came from ancient viruses. Creation scientists predicted that not all—and perhaps not any—retrotransposon activity was viral or random, but instead was part of a well-designed, originally created cellular process.2 The new Nature Genetics study has confirmed this creation prediction.

The researchers found that between 6 and 30 percent of active RNA transcripts use retrotransposon sequences.1 These transcripts carry regulatory information from the DNA to the rest of the cell. They also found that different sections of retrotransposon sequences are accessed by different tissues. Thus, at least some, and perhaps all, of the sequences carry important information for certain cells to use. This means transposons did not come from ancient viruses and therefore can no longer be used to support the idea that chimpanzees and humans evolved from a common ancestor that was infected by a virus.3

This discovery will likely disappoint a generation of evolutionary scientists who based human-chimp ancestry and therefore broad-scale evolution on the false assumption that retrotransposons and the like were from viral infections. But it likewise ought to disappoint those who have relied on supposedly useless, supposedly virus-derived DNA as raw material employed by some imaginary evolutionary process to engineer ever-more-complicated life forms. Instead, it looks like all DNA is useful, which suggests that its host creatures were designed on purpose.4

References
1.Faulkner, G. J. et al. 2009. The regulated retrotransposon transcriptome of mammalian cells. Nature Genetics. 41 (5): 563-571.
2.Walkup, L. K. 2000. Junk DNA: evolutionary discards or God’s tools? Technical Journal (now Journalof Creation). 14 (2): 18-30.
3.The reason that both chimpanzees and humans have such similar looking sequences on similar chromosomes could be because both species experienced similar retrotransposon activity in the past, following similar patterns when they were being copied and inserted within their respective species.
4.For more examples, see Thomas, B. Genetic Expression: Same Genes Can Produce Different Results. ICR News. Posted on icr.org November 19, 2008, accessed December 17, 2009.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on December 29, 2009.


Evidence for Creation › Evidence from Science › Evidence from the Life Sciences › All Life Systems Were Created by God › DNA Was Created as a Reservoir for the Information of Life

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Citing Brian Thomas, M.S. does not help your credibility in the slightest.

ICR News

Mr Thomas' primary contributions to the ICR's website is his (alleged)[3] Daily Science Updates,[4] or alternatively ICR News.[5] These articles are an attempt to cover (stale) news that can be messily shoehorned into supporting Creationism, often to much hilarity.

Brian's first article for ICR News was published on the ICR's website on June 4, 2008, and was called Synthetic Life "Breakthrough" Just Demonstrates Design.[6] Daily Science Update articles from him have appeared more-or-less regularly since.

Articles tend to come out around a fortnight after both the news item originally broke and the access dates given for webpages in the 'references,' for reasons unknown. As of March-April 2012, publishing rates have dropped from the usual 5 per week to only 3. Articles are typically - though not always - made available online at midnight Dallas time. A complete list of all Daily Science Updates can be found here.

The content of Brian's articles suggest that he does very little research on a topic beyond a few news items and the original scientific paper.[7] For example, his April 4, 2012 article Distant Watery Planet Looks Young[8] questioned whether the red dwarf-orbiting exoplanet Gliese 1214 b[wp] could have held on to its atmosphere for billions of years against the solar wind[9] while orbiting so close to the star. He then stated:


“”The scientific literature typically does not ask questions like these.


This is despite the fact that a simple google search of “red dwarf solar wind” would turn up articles like Living with a Red Dwarf which very much suggests that he is dead wrong in his claim: the matter has indeed been considered and the planet could have held on to its atmosphere for the time required. Further evidence of the lack of research on Mr Thomas' part comes in the form of a minor change to the opening lines where he had erroneously stated that the planet had been "studied for about a decade" to saying that it had been "studied since 2009".[10]
Similar problems can be found in most, if not all of his articles. One of the few known times that he has been right about anything was in his article More Earthquake Data Does Not Mean More Earthquakes,[11] arguing against the idea of imminent apocalypse due to the apparently increased number of earthquakes.

[edit] Acts & Facts

The 'best' (or rather, a small subset) of Brian's articles are sometimes rewritten with the help of fellow science writer Frank Sherwin and appear in the ICR's monthly newsletter, Acts & Facts. The results tend to have a slightly more general topic than the original, news item-focused article, but are no better when it comes to scientific accuracy and the other problems that Brian's articles suffer from.


[edit] Speaking

Brian is listed as one of the ICR's speakers,[12] and he does seem to do this from time to time. But the ICR's speakers rarely go far from Dallas, and do not seem to appear often—Brian seems to be no different.

In fact, by citing him you have only further hurt your case!

Gunnar wrote:In fact, by citing him you have only further hurt your case!

Gunnar,

You are clearly an educated and well informed individual when it comes to science and objective reality. Little Nipper is a creationist troll who clearly has no intent of engaging with anything but make-it-up-as-you-go-along pseudoscience.

His abject ignorance, misunderstanding, and self delusion when it comes to objective reality, and the mainstream science that allows humankind to understand it, are apparent with every post.

Like any troll, what he craves is attention. In his mind, the willingness of mainstream science to even engage with creationism lends credibility to the creationist delusion.

The most effective way to respond to him is no response at all. His clock was well and truly cleaned on the other creationist thread in the Celestial Forum. At this point, he has nothing of value to add to the conversation. He is nothing but a time waster - and a monumental one at that.

DrW,

Thanks for that reminder. You are obviously right about that. It probably is a waste of time to engage him. I hope, though, that at least some, if not most, can see how he further damages the credibility of his views with every post he makes.

Thanks also for all I have learned from your posts! You have long been one of my very favorite contributors to this forum!

Gunnar wrote:DrW,

Thanks for that reminder. You are obviously right about that. It probably is a waste of time to engage him. I hope, though, that at least some, if not most, can see how he further damages the credibility of his views with every post he makes.

Thanks also for all I have learned from your posts! You have long been one of my very favorite contributors to this forum!

LittleNipper is the embodiment of the nonsense fabricated and churned out by the Morris dynasty of religious frauds. Creationism is the signature enterprise of the Seventh Day Adventists who, like the Mormons, have improbable religious, scientific and historical claims that are self-refuting. And yet these kind of folks manage to get a state government to underwrite their projects (the Ark Park) even though doing so is obviously unConstitutional. This is one of those instances where Europeans and the UK look at the US and shake their heads.

We Mormons can point to Haplogroup C as proof that the Lehite Voyage of Discovery camped out at NHM, Siberia before setting sail from Vladivostok around 600 BCE.

Let's see we have the example that an onion has more DNA than a human. We have the example that even some species of onions have 5 times the DNA as other species of onions!

Salamanders have 10 times more, a lungfish 30 times more, amoeba 100 times more DNA than a human.

The key observation isn’t just that very different creatures have very different genome sizes; it’s that similar species can have very different genome sizes. This fact, surprising at the time, begged a good explanation. If two species are similar, yet their genomes are 10x different in size, what’s all that extra DNA doing?

The onion test is a simple reality check for anyone who thinks they have come up with a universal function for junk DNA. Whatever your proposed function, ask yourself this question: Can I explain why an onion needs about five times more non-coding DNA for this function than a human?

This comparison is chosen more or less arbitrarily (there are far bigger genomes than onion, and far smaller ones than human), but it makes the problem of universal function for non-coding DNA clear1.

Further, if you think perhaps onions are somehow special, consider that members of the genus Allium range in genome size from 7 pg to 31.5 pg. So why can A. altyncolicum make do with one fifth as much regulation, structural maintenance, protection against mutagens, or [insert preferred universal function] as A. ursinum?

http://www.genomicron.evolverzone.com/2 ... nion-test/

We have experimental evidence for junk DNA.

Edward Rubin's team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California has shown that deleting large sections of non-coding DNA from mice appears not to affect their development, longevity or reproduction.

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/041018/ ... 018-7.html

Experimental confirmation that further falsifies your assertion that there is no junk DNA.

ENCODE says what?
Posted on September 8, 2012 by seaneddy

So I read in the newspaper this week that the ENCODE project has disproven the idea of junk DNA. I sure wish I’d gotten the memo, because this week a collaboration of labs led by myself, Arian Smit, and Jerzy Jurka just released a new data resource that annotates nearly 50% of the human genome as transposable element-derived, and transposon-derived repetitive sequence is the poster child for what we colloquially call “junk DNA”.

The newspapers went on to say that ENCODE has revolutionized our understanding of noncoding DNA by showing that far from being junk, noncoding DNA contains lots of genetic regulatory switches. Well, that’s also odd, because another part of my lab is (like a lot of other labs in biology these days) studying the regulation of genes in a model animal’s brain (the fruit fly Drosophila). We and everyone else in biology have known for fifty years that genes are controlled by regulatory elements in noncoding DNA. (Well, I’ve only known for thirty years, not fifty, I admit — only since Mrs. Dell’Antonio kicked me out of high school biology class and gave me a molecular genetics textbook to read by myself.)

Now, with all respect to my journalist friends, I’ve learned not to believe everything I read in the newspapers. I figured I’d better read the actual ENCODE papers. This is going to take a while. I’ve only read the main Nature paper carefully so far (there’s 30+ of them, apparently, across multiple journals). But it’s already clear that at least the main ENCODE paper doesn’t say anything like what the newspapers say.

The ENCODE project and our existing knowledge of genomes are both vastly more substantial than the discussion the ENCODE authors are provoking in the press right now.
The human genome has a lot of junk DNA

Genome size varies a lot. You might think that apparently more complex organisms like human would have more DNA than simpler organisms like single-celled amoebae but that turns out not to be true. Salamanders have 10-fold more DNA than us; lungfish, about 30-fold more.

So maybe we don’t really know how to define or measure “complexity”; maybe we’re just being anthropocentric when we think of ourselves as complex. Who’s to say that amoebae are less complex than humans? Ever looked at an amoeba? (They’re pretty awesome.) Still. The key observation isn’t just that very different creatures have very different genome sizes; it’s that similar species can have very different genome sizes. This fact, surprising at the time, begged a good explanation. If two species are similar, yet their genomes are 10x different in size, what’s all that extra DNA doing?

This observation about genome sizes (called the “C-value” paradox, for technical reasons) raised the idea that maybe genomes could expand (and shrink) rapidly (on an evolutionary timescale) as a result of some neutral (non-adaptive) processes — that maybe organisms could tolerate DNA that didn’t have a direct functional effect on the organism itself, but was instead was being created and maintained by neutral or even parasitic mechanisms of evolution. Somebody (it’s a good bet that T. Ryan Gregory knows who) dubbed this “junk” DNA, and that was probably an unfortunate term, because it’s incited people’s anger from the day it was coined. It’s not polite to tell someone their beautiful house is full of junk. Even if it is.

A key discovery that satisfactorily explained the C-value paradox was the discovery that genomes, especially animal and plant genomes, contain large numbers of transposable (mobile) elements that replicate all by themselves, often at the (usually slight) expense of their host genome. For instance, about 10% of the human genome is composed about a million copies of a small mobile element called Alu. Another big fraction of the genome is composed of a mobile element called L1. Transposons are related to viruses, and we think that for the most part they are parasitic in nature. They infect a genome, replicating, spreading, and multiplying; eventually they die, mutate, and decay away, leaving their DNA sequences. Sometimes when an Alu replicates and hops into a new place in our genome, it breaks something. Usually (partly because the genome is mostly nonfunctional) a new Alu just hops somewhere else in the junk, and has no appreciable effect on us.

So it turns out that when we look at all these different genome sizes, almost all of the puzzling size variation is explained by genomes having different “loads” of transposable elements. Some creatures, like pufferfish, have only low loads of transposons. Some creatures, like salamanders, lungfish, amoebae, corn, and lilies, are loaded with massive numbers of transposons. As it happens, the human genome is annotated as about 50% transposon-derived sequence — right at that 50/50 borderline where someone can say “the human genome is mostly junk” and someone else can say “the human genome is mostly not junk”.

In 1980, two key papers — by Orgel and Crick, and by Sapienza and Doolittle — nicely laid out the argument that genomes contain “selfish” or “junk” DNA, largely transposon-derived, sometimes quite large amounts of it. These papers are quite beautiful and scholarly. They are careful to say, for example, that it would be surprising if evolution did not sometimes co-opt useful functions from this great amount of extra DNA sequence slopping around. Indeed, we are now finding many interesting examples of transposon-derived stuff being co-opted for organismal function (but these are the exception, not the rule). Without trying to be snide or pedantically academic, I’ll note that the main ENCODE paper cites neither Orgel/Crick or Sapienza/Doolittle; what this means is, regardless of what we read in the newspapers, ENCODE is not actually trying to interpret their data in light of the current thinking about junk DNA, at least in the actual paper.

Transposon-derived sequences are the poster child for “junk DNA” because we can positively identify transposon-derived sequences by computational analysis, and reconstruct the evolutionary history of transposon invasions of genomes. There’s likely to be other nonfunctional DNA “junk” too, in the DNA that we can’t currently put any annotation at all on, but the key point is that the dead bones of many transposons are something we can affirmatively identify.
Noncoding DNA is part junk, part regulatory, part unknown

It is crucial to understand that “noncoding” DNA is not synonymous with “junk” DNA. The current view of the human genome, which ENCODE has now systematically and comprehensively confirmed and extended, is that it is about 1% protein-coding, in perhaps about 20,000 “genes” averaging about 1500 coding bases each (where the concept of a “gene” is amorphous, but useful; we know one when we see one). Genes are turned on and off by regulatory DNA regions, such as promoters and enhancers — as has been worked out over fifty years, starting with how bacterial viruses work. In animals like humans, most people (ok, I) would guess that there are maybe 10-20 regulatory regions per gene, each maybe 100-300 bases long; so, very roughly, maybe on the order of about 1000-6000 bases of noncoding regulatory information per 1500 coding bases in a gene. I’m only giving hand-wavy back of the envelope notions here because it’s actually quite difficult to pin these numbers down exactly; our current knowledge of regulatory DNA sequences in detail is distressingly incomplete. That’s something that ENCODE’s trying to help figure out, in systematic fashion, and where a lot of ENCODE’s substantive value is. The point is, we already knew there was likely at least as much regulatory DNA as coding DNA, and probably more; we just don’t have a very satisfying handle on it all yet, and we thought we needed an ENCODE project to survey things more comprehensively.

So when you read a Mike Eisen saying “those damn ENCODE people, we already knew noncoding DNA was functional”, and a Larry Moran saying “those damn ENCODE people, there is too a lot of junk DNA”, they aren’t contradicting each other. They’re talking about different (sometimes overlapping) fractions of human DNA. About 1% of it is coding. Something like 1-4% is currently expected to be regulatory noncoding DNA given what we know (and our knowledge about regulatory sites is especially incomplete). About 40-50% of it is derived from transposable elements, and thus affirmatively already annotated as “junk” in the colloquial sense that transposons have their own purpose (and their own own biochemical functions and replicative mechanisms), like the spam in your email. And there’s some overlap: some mobile-element DNA has been co-opted as coding or regulatory DNA, for example.

Now that still leaves a lot of the genome. What’s all that doing? Transposon-derived sequence decays rapidly, by mutation, so it’s certain that there’s some fraction of transposon-derived sequence we just aren’t recognizing with current computational methods, so the 40-50% number must be an underestimate. So most reasonable people (ok, I) would say at this point that the human genome is mostly junk (“mostly” as in, somewhere north of 50%).

At the same time, we still have only a tenuous grasp on the details of gene regulation, even though we think we understand the broad strokes now. Nobody should bet against finding more and more regulatory noncoding DNA, either. The human genome surely contains a lot of unannotated functional DNA. The purpose of the ENCODE project was to help us sort this out. Its data sets, and others like them, will be fundamental in giving us a comprehensive view of the functional elements of the human genome.
ENCODE’s definition of “functional” includes junk

ENCODE has assigned a “biochemical function” to 80% of the genome. The newspapers add, “therefore it’s not junk”, but that’s a critically incorrect logical leap. It presumes that junk DNA doesn’t have a “biochemical function” in the sense that ENCODE chose to operationally define “function”. So in what sense did ENCODE define the slippery concept of biological function, to allow them to assign a human genome fraction (to two significant digits, ahem)?

ENCODE calls a piece of DNA “functional” if it reproducibly binds to a DNA-binding protein, is reproducibly marked by a specific chromatin modification, or if it is transcribed. OK. That’s a fine, measurable operational definition. (One might wonder, why not just call “DNA replication” a function too, and define 100% of the genome as biochemically functional, but of course, as Ewan Birney (the ENCODE czar) would tell you, I would never be that petty. No sir.) I am quite impressed by the care that the ENCODE team has taken to define “reproducibility”, and to process their datasets systematically.

But as far as questions of “junk DNA” are concerned, ENCODE’s definition isn’t relevant at all. The “junk DNA” question is about how much DNA has essentially no direct impact on the organism’s phenotype – roughly, what DNA could I remove (if I had the technology) and still get the same organism. Are transposable elements transcribed as RNA? Do they bind to DNA-binding proteins? Is their chromatin marked? Yes, yes, and yes, of course they are – because at least at one point in their history, transposons are “alive” for themselves (they have genes, they replicate), and even when they die, they’ve still landed in and around genes that are transcribed and regulated, and the transcription system runs right through them.

Thought experiment: if you made a piece of junk for yourself — a completely random DNA sequence! — and dropped it into the middle of a human gene, what would happen to it? It would be transcribed, because the transcription apparatus for that gene would rip right through your junk DNA. ENCODE would call the RNA transcript of your random DNA junk “functional”, by their technical definition. And if even it weren’t transcribed, that would be because it acted as a different kind of functional element (your random DNA could accidentally create a transcriptional terminator).
The random genome project

So a-ha, there’s the real question. The experiment that I’d like to see is the Random Genome Project. Synthesize a hundred million base chromosome of entirely random DNA, and do an ENCODE project on that DNA. Place your bets: will it be transcribed? bound by DNA-binding proteins? chromatin marked?

Of course it will.

The Random Genome Project is the null hypothesis, an essential piece of understanding that would be lovely to have before we all fight about the interpretation of ENCODE data on genomes. For random DNA (not transposon-derived DNA, not coding, not regulatory), what’s our null expectation for all these “functional” ENCODE features, by chance alone, in random DNA?

(Hat tip to The Finch and Pea blog, a great blog that I hadn’t seen before the last few days, where you’ll find essentially the same idea.)
Evolution works on junk

Even if you did the Random Genome Project and found that a goodly fraction of a totally random DNA sequence was “functional”, transcribed and bound and chromatin-marked, would this somehow diminish your view of the human genome?

Personally, I don’t think we can understand genomes unless we try to recognize all the different noisy, neutral evolutionary processes at work in them. Without “noise” — without a background of specific but nonfunctional transcription, binding, and marking — evolution would have less traction, less de novo material to grab hold of and refine and select, to make it more and more useful. Genomes are made of repurposed sequence, borrowed from whatever happened to be there, including the “junk DNA” of invading transposons.

As Sydney Brenner once said, there’s a difference between junk and garbage; garbage is stuff you throw out, junk is stuff you keep because it just might be useful someday.

Conflict of interest/full disclosure: I was a member of the national advisory council to the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute at the time ENCODE was conceived and planned – so I’m not quite as innocent and disinterested in policy questions of NIH NHGRI big science projects and media engagement strategy as this post may have made it sound.

http://cryptogenomicon.org/2012/09/08/encode-says-what/